So, How About Those Twists? (Sinister War Edition - SPOILERS GALORE)

 It's been a while since I've written a post like this; I used to make them a lot for my movie blog, back when I was still watching movies in the theater, especially the big Marvel tentpole films. It's fitting, then, that I repurpose this post for this blog as I discuss the twists that have characterized the latest issue of "The Amazing Spider-Man," namely Vol. 5. No. 73 (or No. 874 in "Legacy" terms for those keeping count).  Given that it's only twenty pages of story, there's not THAT much to unpack, but the three main story developments are well-worth revisiting, to my mind.

1. SINS PAST IS GONE, FOR GOOD

I find it immensely satisfying that a number of comics news writers have basically bannered their stories on this issue with variations on the theme "Marvel rewrites its creepiest story ever." There's no mincing of words, and no pulling of punches, just a descripton of befitting a truly despicable story.

I may be in the minority (or not, actually) but I think I'm one of the people who actually hated "Sins Past" more than "One More Day," and not quite for the reasons that one might think.

Truth be told, I didn't actually grow up with Gwen Stacy. The character was killed off from the Amazing Spider-Man series two years before I was even born, and I didn't exactly seek her out when I started reading comics in the mid to late eighties. I grew up with Mary Jane, and the first few Spider-Man issues I started collecting actually featured a happily married Peter and Mary Jane.

Why then, was I somehow less uncomfortable with Marvel literally using demonic magic to undo Peter's marriage to Mary Jane while their act of retconning Gwen's one-night-stand stuck in my craw so badly? I mean, I didn't even know Gwen as a character.

Here's the thing, though; Gwen and her storied love affair with Peter were one of his most cherished memories, which very much formed a part of who he was as Spider-Man and, like Uncle Ben's death, kind of defined him as a character.  That was what Gwen represented to me, since I had not met her as a character: she was someone who brought out the best in Peter.  This was best exemplified in Jeph Loeb's and Tim Sale's "Spider-Man: Blue."

That J. Michael Straczynski and the Marvel "brain trust" behind "Sins Past" saw fit to not only keep Gwen dead and buried but also to tarnish that memory of her by essentially having her cheat on Peter with a middle-aged Norman Osborn just completely confounded me. It added nothing to the character; it didn't enrich her history in any way. It was like digging up someone's rotting carcass and defacing it, somehow.  

Make no mistake, I think "One More Day" is a truly wretched story, but I got the imperative behind it, as misguided as I think Peter's supernatural divorce was.  In contrast, I never understood why they felt the need to do what they did to Gwen Stacy, and why they saw fit to take a giant shit on one of the most beloved characters in Spider-Man canon. 

What also rankled about "Sins Past" was how seemingly untouchable it was as canon. For the longest time various writers and editors who handled the character refused to undo this blighted storyline. Longtime writer Dan Slott famously declared at a comics convention that he would "never" touch upon "Sins Past" which was especially annoying when Norman Osborn suddnely became the big bad guy near the end of Slott's run. Was it because he couldn't figure out how to undo that piece of crap or because editorial had not given him the green light? We'll probably never know, but for all of his stories, some of them actually very good, Slott will now go down in my memory as the writer who could not undo "Sins Past" despite having nearly a decade to do so. 

That's kind of a shame, because in my opinion, at least, Slott gave us some really good stories, and even undid at least one big mistake on his own by bringing back a fan-favorite character in Ben Reilly. By and large, however, Slott's run was characterized by supposed "game changing" stories that never really made any lasting impression on the status quo. Peter loses his Spider-sense? He gets it back in the next few issues. Doc Ock takes over Peter's body? Peter gets it back in a little over a year.  Peter becomes a billionaire CEO?  Just wait until it all comes crashing down. Doc Ock gets a new, superior clone body so that he's no longer a schlub with a bowl cut? Don't count on that lasting very long. Norman Osborn loses his mind and forgets Peter's secret identity? Puh-LEAZE.  Flash Thompson dies? Shhyeah right. That's probably what's really sad about Slott's writing, whether it's by his own design or that of his editors: so much of it is disposable.

Spencer, for all of his flaws, will be remembered for stories that will last. His effort to restore the grim effects of "Kraven's Last Hunt" while ultimately blunted by the need to keep an incarnation of Sergei Kravinoff alive, was still valiant and is unlikely to be retconned away.  His undoing of "Sins Past" will stand through the ages, and I cannot think of ANYONE who would want to reinstate as canon one of the most hated Spider-Man stories in the history of the title.  THIS new status quo is going to STICK, and all future Marvel writers and editors will owe Spencer a debt of immense gratitude.  

If Nick Spencer manages to undo "One More Day" as well, he will be a hero for all the ages, whatever the flaws of his individual stories may be. 

What makes Spencer's tale-weaving remarkable was how deep he dug into Spider-Man's history to find just the right story to retcon the retcon, and he found an unlikely but brilliant candidate in the "Lifetheft" saga of 1993, a time when, as far as the readership was concerned, Norman Osborn was still dead and buried.  Spencer basically folded Harry's long-term revenge scheme against Norman into his revenge scheme against Peter, which helped explain the admittedly convoluted way in which he manufactured the fake Osborn/Stacy progeny Gabriel and Sarah. 

How did Spencer address the fact that, when Harry actually hatched the scheme back then, Norman was supposed to be dead? Simple: "I knew you'd come back."  It was succinct, and oh-so-true to the spirit of Marvel Comics, in which death is basically a revolving door.

But that brings us to the second twist...

2. HARRY OSBORN REALLY DIED.

My younger sister doesn't read comics.  Like most of the world, she watched Avengers: Endgame and even watched Spider-Man: Far From Home with me and my family with a casual fan's understanding of the lore. I don't mind, it just wasn't her thing, that's all. 

But when she read J.M. DeMatteis and Sal Buscema's "Spectacular Spider-Man"  #200 sometime in the 1990s, despite never even having been introduced to Harry Osborn prior to that issue, it brought her to tears. That was how powerful and effective DeMatteis' storytelling was back then; a first-time reader, right off the bat, was emotionally affected by a single issue.   Harry Osborn's death, in my humble opinion was one of the best-written moments in all of Spider-Man canon, and it redeemed a character who had undergone a truly dark journey dating all the way back to before I'd even been born. 

There was something distinctly "meta" about how Norman Osborn revisited that moment in The Amazing Spider-Man #73.   We had already seen the series' artists recreating Sal Buscema's deeply moving rendition of Harry's death, but Osborn verbalized it beautifully: "You died a hero! You died loved."  Norman may have addressed this to an artificial intelligence construct of Harry who had been uploaded years before (and whom I think was originally just written as a recording), but it distinctly felt as though Norman spoke with Spencer's voice, addressing the numbskulls who had undone one of the more poignant moments in Spider-Man's history.  Harry had managed to come into his own just before he died. 

Harry's abrupt resurrection in the post-"One More Day" status quo was emblematic of how much contempt Joe Quesada and Marvel editorial had for the last couple of decades of storytelling that they had callously undone.  Not only did Quesada want to transplant Peter back into an updated version of the swinging sixties, he also wanted to bring along his spoiled, ne'er-do-well bestie and all of his daddy issues.  The annoying retcon of Norman stealing Harry's body from the morgue went further towards cheapening what was a landmark moment in Spider-Man's history, and coupled with the fact that Norman had (or thought he had) two other children to carry on his "legacy," it made Harry seem even more pathetic. Fortunately, we've now learned that the whiny millennial who's been posing as Harry Osborn since 2008 is actually someone else. 

Spencer didn't just restore Harry's death; he restored his dignity as a character. 

Also, given the heavily supernatural component of the story, it would appear that Harry's death is not at all permanent, which brings us to the third twist that I'd like to revisit...

3. NORMAN'S FAUSTIAN BARGAIN

When it comes to making deals with the devil, why should Peter Parker have all the fun? Norman Osborn's deal with Mephisto, in which he obtains fame and fortune at the cost of his son's soul, is the retcon I never knew I needed. 

Similar to the case of Gwen Stacy, I only really got to know Norman as a character after his resurrection by Howard Mackie and John Romita Jr. back in 1996, but the notion of him selling his son to the devil seems entirely in line with the character as he has been written since his return from the dead: vain, superficial, and utterly self-centered. Of course he'd sell his son to the devil to benefit himself! It makes so much more sense than Peter selling his marriage to the devil!

Sure, Spencer gives him a dose of much-needed humanity in these last few issues of his run, but he makes it clear that Osborn is finally paying the price for his many, many sins, and not just by having Volstagg smack him in the face. 

There was something distinctly repetitive about how Dan Slott wrote Norman Osborn stories, which he did for the better part of a decade, longer even than Norman's original life-span in the Stan Lee (and later Gerry Conway) comics. I kid you not.  He'd come up with some scheme, Peter would thwart him, and Norman would suffer humiliation and anguish and then just come back again, meaner and more powerful than ever. It's one of the reasons why Slott's writing felt so disposable, even when he was backed up by sublime collaborators like Stuart Immonen. 

Spencer's writing feels different, though; this story is not even about Norman's dynamic with Peter. I'll admit it's a little too early to call this, with one issue yet to go, but it genuinely feels, in light of everything that's come before, that there will be lasting consequences for Norman following the culmination of Harry's grand plan from beyond the gate of Hell itself. 

Does it mean Norman will die? No, and even if he does, that's the easiest thing to undo in comics. It does feel, though, like nothing will ever be the same with him again. 

All of that in one issue. Wow.

Also, having Carlie Cooper, a cast member introduced in the post-"One More Day" status quo, discover the true Harry's corpse along with ersatz Harry, neatly ties past together with present, and establishes that Spencer is firmly taking this book into the future. 

For better or worse, Nick Spencer may not be remembered as the best Spider-Man writer of all time, but he will be remembered as the guy who fixed a LOT of the book's problems. 

Nick Spencer, You are My Hero: A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man #73 (HEAVY SPOILERS)

 written by Nick Spencer

drawn by Ze Carlos, Carlos Gomez and Marcelo Ferreira

colored by Alex Sinclair

Spider-Man goes to confront Kindred one last time, while Mary Jane Watson and Norman Osborn, who have gone to meet with the mysterious villain ahead of Peter, are confronted with some shocking truths. Meanwhile, Carlie Cooper and Harry Osborn make an equally startling discovery in the morgue. 

It was a decent enough issue, and that's all I'll say for those wanting to avoid spoilers.  For those who want to know more, read on...

(SPOILERS BEGIN)

And with one issue, Nick Spencer almost manages to atone for three years of the often insufferable build-up and filler he stuffed my reading list with to get to this very moment. 

This is the moment that the Kindred Saga comes to its head, in which Spencer reveals that "Sins Past," the widely-despised 2004 story in which Marvel's "brain trust" retconned into Spider-Man canon a sexual affair between a middle-aged Norman Osborn and a teenaged Gwen Stacy, was nothing but an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Harry Osborn, acting in conspiracy with Mysterio and Mendel Stromm, on his dad Norman.  Not only that, but Mary Jane, who was actually the one who revealed the affair to Peter back then, learns that she was a victim of the hoax too, courtesy of "therapy" sessions with Mysterio masquerading as a psychiatrist. 

For a good chunk of the issue, Norman talks to what appears to be an artificial intelligence version of Harry, who tells his "dad" that the elder Osborn never had sex with Gwen, and that he did not father children by her.  The entire thing was basically a memory implanted by hypnosis and hallucinogens courtesy of Mysterio and Stromm, who were working under orders that the actual Harry Osborn had given them just before his death in 1993's Spectacular Spider-Man #200. 

Thus is the second bombshell dropped in less than five pages: Harry's resurrection from the dead, which was retconned into canon shortly after the events of the similarly-reviled "One More Day," has also been undone. It turns out that the real Harry has spent the last several years either as wormfood or burning in hell while an AI version of him who's been around since the 1990s (our time, not theirs) has been carrying out a really elaborate, long-term revenge plan on both Peter and Norman.    Why has Harry been in hell? Well, in yet another retcon, apparently Norman sold Harry's soul to Mephisto when he was just a kid in exchange for fame and fortune.

This is the issue that, for the last seventeen years,  I have been pining for, and more recently, since Dan Slott started focusing on Norman Osborn as Peter Parker's biggest of baddies in the last year or so of his run on The Amazing Spider-Man.  This is the issue that neither Slott nor Marvel's editorial brain trust during his run had the balls or the storytelling chops to pull off.

As much as I love to take potshots at Spencer's writing, for the remainder of the series I will lay off, because he has done exactly what I have been hoping he would do from the moment it became clear that he had big plans for Norman Osborn in his run.  When he undid Slott's silly, hackneyed, "secret identity amnesia" which was never going to last, it became increasingly clear that Spencer had something big planned, especially after his big Kraven arc played out.  When he actually NAMED one of his mini story arcs "Sins Past," it was definitely a huge wink and nod to that 2004 clusterfuck, but apparently no one picked up on because they all thought it was a reference to Sin Eater, who was front and center in that story, and because everyone else was obsessed with the notion that Marvel was working up to undo "One More Day" instead.

So no matter how big a headache this issue may be for anyone who isn't familiar with the last three decades of lore, I'm really happy that Spencer pulled the trigger on this audacious retcon of a retcon. 

I'd be happier if the art wasn't the usual mashup of several disparate art styles that has been the norm on this book for the last year or so, but given that Marvel has granted one of my most ardent wishes for this title, I have little reason to complain.

There's actually a more than even chance that Spencer could, with his valedictory issue, undo "One More Day" as well, given Mephisto's heavy involvement in this story, but at this point this would just  be icing on the cake for me. 

8.5/10

 

My Thoughts on Marvel's "Sinister War" and Their Annoying New Habit

 Sinister War

Written by Nick Spencer

Drawn by Mark Bagley and too many other artists.

I'll be honest; I was skeptical of the storytelling merits of "Sinister War" when it was announced. I know that as an entertainment company, basically Marvel is all about cash grabs, but this one felt a little more gratuitous than usual. It wasn't unlike the manner in which Marvel, especially during Spencer's run, has made a habit of swelling up his storylines with extra issues during which parallel stories run right alongside the main one as not quite necessary reading but definitely as an important supplement.  They did this with the godawful Kraven story, as well as the Sin-Eater/Kindred story.

"Sinister War" had a different feel to it, and from a pure story perspective, I feel it actually worked better than a lot of the other "parallel" stories Marvel has put out as companion pieces to "The Amazing Spider-Man." 

The premise is simple: Kindred, whom we thought was Harry Osborn but apparently isn't (as is disclosed over in the main title), has made a deal with five different supervillain teams: kill Spider-Man, or face an eternity of damnation.  Spidey is basically in for the fight of his life, but may yet find some unexpected help along the way.  Also, in the background, a mysterious conversation takes place between Doctor Strange and Mephisto.

I guess Marvel figured that people were getting sick of this "plus" style of storytelling, so they packaged this latest batch as a miniseries to change the marketing angle a little bit. That said, "Sinister War" reads pretty well on its own.  Rather than shed light on the backstory of Kindred, which is still being teased agonizingly slowly in the main title, the story stays focused on Peter's battle royale with three dozen supervillains, and it's a brisk and decent, if slightly insubstantial read.

The only thing I truly disliked about this was the irritating "jam" style art. The story was drawn mostly by legendary Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley (who's probably a bazillionaire owing to the fact that his art has adorned Spider-Man merch for a good portion of the 21st century) but unlike the good old days in which he drew Ultimate Spider-Man all by himself for Brian Michael Bendis for a record-setting number of issues, for some reason he needs  an army of backup artists filling in random pages for just four issues of story.  While I patiently sat through this format for something like two years, it's no longer fun, whether it's here or over in the main title, and makes for a distinctly unpleasant reading experience. Bring back John Romita, Jr. for gosh sakes.

As Nick Spencer wraps up his run, which I thought started so strongly back in 2018, I can't help but have mixed feelings about the stories he produced.  He set out, for example, to undo the resurrection of Kraven the Hunter, which essentially invalidated the modern classic "Kraven's Last Hunt" story, only for editorial to allow him some half-assed compromise in which Kraven is killed but survived by his clone. His buddy-comedy storyline involving Boomerang becoming Spider-Man's roommate was, oddly enough, one of his more solid pieces of narrative, with the most genuine emotional resonance and the best artwork, courtesty mainly of Ryan Ottley and Patrick Gleason, and it has a tragic footnote right  here in "Sinister War."  

The centerpiece of Spencer's run appears to be this meandering mess involving Kindred, which is either an attempt to undo the infamous "One More Day" or, given the heavy involvement of Norman Osborn, a revisiting (and hopefully eradication) of his retconned sexual affair with Gwen Stacy, the abhorrent "Sins Past."  While I'd be happiest if it was the latter, at this point I really just want it to be over, whatever the outcome.

And with two more issues two go for Spencer's run, I'm about to get my wish.

In the meantime, though, "Sinister War" was a decent enough distraction, muddled art notwithstanding. 

6.5/10